Planktonic Diatoms

[KurtM]

As a microscopy hobbyist who lives near the sea, I've owned a plankton net for a good while, but really haven't used it as much as I ought to. Lately I've become more enthusiastic about exploring the "other half" of the diatom (micro) world, meaning diatom varieties that drift with the currents rather than find a substrate of some sort or another to attach to. These "vagabond" types generally take on fantastic forms, sometimes with impossibly long and delicate spines, that are designed to suspend them in the water, and they often link up to form chains with the same goal in mind. And often it's both - see first image of Thalassiosira sp. The extreme fragility of their structures make it more or less impossible to clean and permanently mount most, if not all, of these planktonic diatoms.

[Wes]

Really nice catch and photos, Kurt. Number 3 and 5 are my favorite.

[Javier]

Beautiful diatoms and fantastic imaging.

[tlansing]

Beautiful photos, Kurt! Which microscope did you use to take these photos?

Tim

[zzffnn]

Fascinating forms, thank you for sharing, Kurt!

[KurtM]

Thanks, everyone! I wish I had remembered to add the astounding fact (to me anyway) that the Rhizosolenia sp., which is actually a chain of three, in image #4 measures a full 1 mm in overall length! When I first saw it I didn't think it could be a diatom at that size, but closer inspection revealed it could be nothing else. That was made in phase contrast image, with the 10/.3 Splan PL. All others were using the 20/0.70 Splanapo and 40/0.95 Splanapo (dry) objectives, all through the Olympus BHS BH-2.

Here are some more, this time of some chains of Chaetoceros sp., the first with a Ditylum sp. keeping it company. It's almost comical how these things simply refuse to sink; if I can think up a way to conduct an experiment, it'd be fun to see just how long it might take for them to settle out.

[Dubious]

Great catches and beautiful images! I am going to have to get a plankton net and try my luck!

[deBult]

Nice ones Kurt,

As a NEWBY on seawater creatures: please recommend some literature guidance to START identifying the species.

Thank you,
deBult

[KurtM]

deBult, besides the internet, I find two books helpful:
"Marine Plankton, A Practical Guide" by G.E. Newell & R.C. Newell
"A Guide to Coastal Plankton and Marine Invertebrate Larvae" by DeBoyd L. Smith & Kevin B. Johnson

Dubious, I find this one to be very high quality and reasonably priced for a plankton net, which are never cheap:
https://shop.sciencefirst.com/wildco/st ... -80um.html

[MicroBob]

New on our website you can find a nice introduction into plancton collecting and observation technique in german language by Gerd Schmahl: http://www.mikrohamburg.de/Tips/PlanktonGerdSchmahl.pdf

Hi Kurt,
your chaetoceros images are great, what a beautiful water organism!

Bob

[KurtM]

Is there any hope of getting that translated into English? How I would love to be able to read it through...

[deBult]

deBult, besides the internet, I find two books helpful:
"Marine Plankton, A Practical Guide" by G.E. Newell & R.C. Newell
"A Guide to Coastal Plankton and Marine Invertebrate Larvae" by DeBoyd L. Smith & Kevin B. Johnson

Tnx : on the lookout (I’m in Europe).

[dtsh]

Is there any hope of getting that translated into English? How I would love to be able to read it through...

I couldn't get Google translate to process the entire pdf, but a few attempts at copy/paste seem to work. A tad clunky, but an option.

[Hobbyst46]

Very beautiful photos, Kurt.
Especially the DIC. The phase contrast image is very good too.
Such long, yet also flat diatoms ! the large diatoms that I play with are Surirella and Pinnularia, but both of them are not flat - gently cleaned frustules are very clearly voluminous, 3D.

[MicroBob]

Is there any hope of getting that translated into English? How I would love to be able to read it through...

I would really like to but realistically I have too many other things I would like to too...
But DeepL and oogle translator should work to some degree.

[Sabatini]

Great images!

[PeteM]

Add me to the admiring chorus, Kurt. Thanks for posting these wonderful images.